


i'll strip away your hard veneer

by empty_throne



Category: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Anal Sex, Kinbaku, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rope Bondage, Shibari, Trust Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 00:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8511901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empty_throne/pseuds/empty_throne
Summary: Set after Servant of the Shard. What starts as a trip down memory lane soon leads Entreri somewhere he never expected to go.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gentlezombie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/gifts).



> Title is from Garbage's song "Queer."

Entreri knew something was off the moment he entered the room, but he didn’t know what.

Jarlaxle was lounging by the fire, his boots outstretched until the dark elf risked singing the fine leather. A glass of wine dangled from his elegant fingers, nearly untouched. Entreri didn’t do anything so obvious as look at the bottle on the table at Jarlaxle’s side, but in his peripheral vision he saw that it too was barely depleted. So, the drow hadn’t drunk much. Nothing unusual about that. Jarlaxle was too canny to lose his self-control in a wine bottle.

But something was still off.

If anyone was lurking in the room, they were well-concealed. To Entreri’s left there were several more chairs arranged around a table; to his right stood a sumptuous four-poster bed. They’d done well for themselves since the Crystal Shard was destroyed, and Jarlaxle had spent coin with a lavish hand to get himself the best room in the best inn the town had to offer. Plenty of potential hiding places, but Entreri didn’t think any of them were occupied.

And still the hairs on the back of his neck refused to lie down. Entreri hated it, this feeling of uneasiness, and this inability to put his finger on the cause.

If Jarlaxle noticed anything amiss, he gave no sign of it. Instead he took a sip of wine, savoring it for a moment as he studied Entreri, then swallowing so he could speak. “I have been thinking.”

“About?” Entreri stayed where he was, not taking the chair across from Jarlaxle. Until he knew what was going on, he preferred to keep to his feet, with room to move if necessary.

“About the Dallabad Oasis,” Jarlaxle said, gesturing with the cup as if to conjure up a vision of that desert place. “As we left it. The crystalline towers falling into dust behind us, you with Crenshinibon in your possession ... do you remember?”

Entreri was too disciplined to show a scowl on his face, but the memory made him tighten up inside. “I’m not likely to forget it any time soon.”

“You were badly wounded,” Jarlaxle mused.

“From one of your daggers.”

The dark elf set his wine glass down, not bothering to acknowledge Entreri’s point. “Wounded, and weak. Too weak to resist me if I chose to take the Crystal Shard from you. I almost did, you know. It was whispering to me, telling me you had betrayed me by stealing it. But I left it in your keeping.” He took off his hat, that absurd article with its enormous diatryma feather, and hooked its brim over the arm of the empty chair across from him.

“I know all of this,” Entreri said, controlling his impatience. “Why bother reminding me of it now?” Apprehension chilled his blood. “The Crystal Shard was destroyed. Wasn’t it?”

Jarlaxle laughed, his body loose and easy. “Oh, of course. Gone for good, and good riddance.” He drew off his eyepatch, tossed it aside, began divesting himself of the numerous bracelets and rings that decked his arms.

Entreri watched these motions with a suspicious eye. “So I ask again. Why bring up such memories?”

“Why, because I have been thinking about them.” Jarlaxle laid his earring with the pile of his jewelry, then bent and began working his feet out of his boots. “I left Crenshinibon in your keeping. At the time I thought about it differently, but in hindsight I can see more clearly. That day in the desert--that was the moment when I truly began to trust you.”

Something was off, to be sure, and its name was Jarlaxle. Half the things the dark elf wore or carried were magical in nature; not once had Entreri seen him lay them all aside like this. Well, not all of them--not yet. One of the buttons on his waistcoat could transform into an enchanted bag, for example, and Entreri had no delusions that he knew of every other trick the drow had secreted away.

But no sooner did that thought enter his mind than Jarlaxle finished with the boots and unfastened the waistcoat, releasing each button with a negligent flick of his fingers.

Entreri backed up a step. “What are you doing?”

“Making a point.” Jarlaxle stood and shrugged out of his waistcoat. Then, with one smooth motion, he dragged his shirt over his head, dropping it in a soft pile on the floor. The light from the fire painted his wiry body, advertising every movement he made. There would be no hiding an incipient attack, not with all the flamboyant distractions of his clothing gone.

But Jarlaxle was not interested in attacking. Before Entreri could master his shock and confusion enough to say anything more, Jarlaxle skinned out of his breeches and kicked them aside. He stood utterly naked by the fire, stripped of every trick, every defense, every hidden resource.

No. Entreri didn’t believe that. This was Jarlaxle. The more vulnerable he made himself seem, the more likely it was that he was luring the observer into a trap.

The dark elf seemed to know that any sudden movements would put Entreri into lethal action. Moving slowly, he picked up something from the mantel above the fire. A wand, Entreri saw, which the drow held out to him. “If you please. But not until I am standing over there; I would prefer you not damage my belongings.”

Entreri took the wand, numbly. “What is this?”

“A means of dispelling any enchantments that may linger about my person.” Jarlaxle left the fireside, walking to one end of the room. The warm light revealed every shift of muscle as he moved, in his calves, in his thighs, in his ass. Then the drow turned to face Entreri once more, seemingly unconcerned with his bare state. Entreri did not look away. He’d seen everything the humanoid body had to offer. That wasn’t what bothered him about this moment--not when there were so many other things about it to set him off-balance.

“Whenever you are ready,” Jarlaxle said with a small bow.

Entreri set his jaw. Whatever point his unpredictable ally was trying to make, best to get it over with. He pointed the wand at Jarlaxle and activated it, feeling the pulse as the item tore apart any dweomers in its path. Any weak enough to fall to its power, that was. The assassin knew enough about magic to know that stronger effects could withstand a test like this. If Jarlaxle had some reserve hidden up his ... lack of sleeve, it must be powerful.

But Jarlaxle only smiled. “Splendid. So now you see the depths of my trust for you. There you stand, armed with a variety of weapons and enchantments you might use against me, while I stand here, without even a stitch of clothing with which to defend myself.”

“You are as defenseless as a viper,” Entreri shot back.

“Oh, rest assured--if you try to kill me, I will fight back as best as I can. But I have no illusions that I would last for long against that sword you carry, or that dagger. Not even,” Jarlaxle added, “if you were as unarmed as I.”

Now, at last, he saw where the dark elf aimed. “I do not trust you.”

“I think you do,” Jarlaxle said softly. “Because you see, I have been thinking about that day in the desert. When you were wounded, and in possession of the object I desired most in the world. I could have killed you. I could have taken the artifact back. You knew both of these things ... and yet you trusted me to do neither.”

Trust was folly. Trust was dependence, and dependence was weakness, and Artemis Entreri despised weakness above all other things.

But that didn’t explain why his cock was as hard as steel, and had been ever since he realized Jarlaxle was stripping himself of all his magical defenses.

There was no way the dark elf could see that, not through the clothing Entreri wore. But Jarlaxle watched him steadily, as if he knew. “My friend,” he said, savoring the words like he’d savored the wine a moment before. “Lay your weapons aside.”

“ _Don’t give me orders,_ ” Entreri snarled.

Even that was a loss of control, showing his unease so clearly. Jarlaxle only nodded. “Of course. As you have said before, obeying an order requires you to trust the one who gave it. So I say again ... _lay your weapons aside._ ”

The first utterance of those words had been more of an encouragement than a suggestion. The second was not nearly as soft. Entreri’s hands were on his sword belt before he knew it--and there they froze.

He could not do this. There was no _reason_ to do it. No reason except an aching cock, a tightness within that grew every time he thought about making himself vulnerable to this drow. But Entreri had long since mastered his passions. He wasn’t about to fling that aside just because Jarlaxle had somehow seen through to a truth Entreri had kept hidden even from himself.

He thought about the inn beyond the room’s door, and all the enemies they’d made in the recent past. “You may be fool enough to leave yourself open to any passing attacker, but I am not.”

Jarlaxle threw back his bald head and laughed. “Oh, my dear Entreri. I said I trusted _you_. I did not say I trusted the rest of the world. You may be sure I have taken appropriate precautions.”

Entreri trusted no precautions he had not taken himself. And yet the buckle of his sword belt was open, the straps coming free. Charon’s Claw thunked quietly on the floorboards as he laid it down.

Jarlaxle watched him the entire time, as Entreri divested himself of the enchanted gauntlet, the jeweled dagger, various other knives. The drow made no effort to hide his satisfaction. On the contrary, he took his own cock in hand and stroked it idly while Entreri stripped down. It hardened swiftly under his touch, and Entreri knew that had less to do with the physical stimulation and more to do with the sight of the assassin laying himself defenseless, as Jarlaxle himself had done a moment ago.

Boots. Tunic. Shirt. Entreri carried more scars than Jarlaxle; he’d had less access to healing magic in his early years than the dark elf. Or perhaps elven skin healed differently, resisting marks in much the same way their bodies resisted aging. And then his breeches were gone, and he was more vulnerable than he had been since childhood. Even when he bathed, he kept weapons close to hand.

He spread his arms. “Do you believe I’m done? Or should I give you that wand back?”

Jarlaxle only smiled. “No need. Remember, I trust you.” Then the dark elf glided closer, with that graceful, perfectly balanced stride Entreri had admired so many times, though never with a chance to see so clearly how it was done. “Come.”

It should have been obvious from the moment Jarlaxle touched his cock, from the moment he stepped aside to let Entreri use the wand, from the moment he began stripping. The drow had not chosen this side of the room at random. He could have gone to stand by the table at the other end of the chamber, but instead he had chosen to put himself closer to the bed.

Entreri followed him, feeling simultaneously numb, and like every nerve in his body had been lit on fire. They stopped near the foot of the bed. The assassin and the drow were not far apart in height, so it was easy for Jarlaxle to whisper two soul-searing words into his ear. “Trust me.”

His breath was coming fast and rough, as if he’d been fighting a furious battle, until it made him light-headed. He barely even resisted when Jarlaxle pushed him gently back, only stopping when he felt the bedpost cool against his spine.

The portion of his mind that never stopped calculating for survival offered up a selection of movements that would let him escape this position. Entreri didn't use any of them.

Jarlaxle sank to his knees, putting himself on a level with the assassin’s cock. By now Entreri was painfully hard, so much so that he almost dreaded the first touch, though not half as much as he craved it. He stared down at the smooth blackness of Jarlaxle’s head, then caught the gleam of the dark elf’s eyes as he glanced upward.

“Don’t worry,” Jarlaxle said. “I won’t hurt you.”

Then his mouth was on Entreri’s cock. Delicate touches at first, brief licks, even just the caress of his breath on wet skin. “I won’t hurt you,” Jarlaxle murmured again. “But you know I _could_.”

A bolt of fire seemed to shoot up from Entreri’s groin.

“You spent time in Menzoberranzan,” Jarlaxle said, after sucking briefly at the head of Entreri’s cock. “With the priestesses.” Another gliding stroke. “You know the torments they’ve invented, over the centuries.”

Vile memories, all of them. But they contrasted with this, the ecstasy of Jarlaxle’s mouth, and Entreri's hands sought out the bedpost behind him, clamping down hard. The drow punctuated his ministrations with reminders, as if he knew how they would inflame the assassin. “You know the things I could do to you with knives.” This time he took the whole length. “With ice.” He sucked harder. “With hot steel.”

Entreri knew. He knew, and he was weaponless, backed up against the bedpost, with Jarlaxle’s mouth holding him pinned. Enemies could have burst through the door that second and he would have heard nothing except the dark elf’s voice, murmuring graphic descriptions of all the torments he could inflict but wouldn’t, and the wet sounds that brought indescribable pleasure, until a harsh and desperate cry burst from Entreri’s body, his knees almost buckling as he came.

But Jarlaxle was there, his deceptively delicate hands keeping Entreri on his feet. As soon as the assassin steadied he stumbled a few paces away, shaking from head to toe. He’d bought the company of whores from time to time, knowing his control would be better if he didn’t deprive himself of release. None of it had ever approached even the shadow of this moment, the bone-shattering rapture of what Jarlaxle had done.

The mercenary wisely gave him a moment to compose himself. If he’d spoken right away, Entreri might have struck him, because the words--any words--would have come too close to a wound too raw. But Jarlaxle waited, until Entreri’s breathing began to slow.

Then he spoke, again with that air of command. “We’ve only just begun, my friend. Get on the bed.”

Entreri obeyed. Out of a vestigial sense of fairness? He almost wished he could pretend so. It was better to think that he felt obligated to balance the scales with Jarlaxle than to admit, even to himself, that his cock had jumped at the words. This soon after spending himself, he should have been moribund, but the sheer breathtaking shock of this evening made him hypersensitive.

Jarlaxle reached under the coverlet and came out with a coil of thin rope. Entreri almost lashed out when he realized the purpose of that rope, every battle-honed instinct shrieking at him that this was madness. Suicide. But Jarlaxle spoke again, those same two words, like a wizard’s spell. “ _Trust me._ ”

And Entreri held still.

Jaraxle didn’t simply bind Entreri’s hands behind him. Instead he wove a complex web of rope, knotting it around the assassin’s arms and torso, a net clearly intended to be as much ornamental as functional. Entreri was in no state to consider its aesthetic merits, but he couldn’t argue its effectiveness; by the time Jarlaxle finished the last knot, he was well and truly trapped. The only way he could get free was if he crossed the room to where they had left their weapons, and even then, he would bleed in trying to cut himself free--

But Jarlaxle was not finished after all.

“Kneel,” the drow said. Entreri knelt, balancing on the mattress. Two more pieces of rope appeared, this time from under the pillow. One piece for each leg, binding calf to thigh, so that the only way he could move was to shuffle along on his knees, and even then not very well.

And still they were not done.

“Bend forward,” Jarlaxle said. His melodious voice was finally roughening, his breath coming faster, proof that this was as arousing to the dark elf as to Entreri. With two final pieces of cord he connected the network of ropes on Entreri’s body to those trapping his legs, holding him bent, so that his weight was on his shoulders and his ass in the air.

From this, there could be no escape. Jarlaxle knew what he was doing with his knots. The bonds weren’t so tight as to cause Entreri pain, but if he tried to squirm loose he would soon be inextricably caught in a very uncomfortable posture. His mind still worked at the problem, looking for ways to free himself--he would take some bruises falling to the floor, but perhaps after that he could make his way over to the fire--surely he could burn his way out.

But only if Jarlaxle let him. And by the grip the drow took on the ropes, tugging Entreri into a slightly better position on the bed, that wasn’t going to happen.

Entreri’s cock was already half-hard again, just at the thought.

He could not hold back a gasp as something slid into his ass. It slipped in easily, more easily than he expected; the scent of some oil or grease reached his nose, even though his face was half-buried in the bedcovers. Jarlaxle made a low, satisfied noise, and Entreri’s cock jumped again. Then the thing inside him began to move, and he realized it must be the dark elf’s clever, dextrous finger. The same hand that formed the subtle gestures of the drow code went to work on him, and it was all Entreri could do to hold himself still, to keep himself quiet.

Until Jarlaxle said mildly, “This won’t do at all. You’re hiding yourself from me, my friend. I want to see what you’re feeling. Show me what this does to you.” And his fingers, not just one of them anymore, stroked across something deep inside Entreri.

More orders. More trust. The groan that Entreri released into the bed seemed to rise of its own accord from that place Jarlaxle was touching.

He couldn’t see the mercenary’s smile, not with his head at this awkward angle, but he could visualize it all too well. “Much better,” Jarlaxle said. “Keep doing that.” Then the mattress shifted beneath Entreri as the dark elf rose up and slid his cock home.

The binding ropes stopped Entreri from thrashing as he wanted to, but the beauty of them was that he could _try_ to thrash. He could pull against the cords--out of pleasure, out of panic, out of the desire to wrap his bound hand around his own cock--and he didn’t go anywhere, a constant reminder of his helpless state. The fear that induced in him just made him burn hotter. Jarlaxle could do anything to him. A thousand warriors and monsters and assassins had tried to bring Artemis Entreri low, but the only one who succeeded was a drow mercenary, and he did it with trust. With the simple truth that Entreri had already put his life in Jarlaxle’s hands, and had it returned to him unharmed. He was vulnerable before he ever laid aside Charon’s Claw and let himself be bound like this, and no matter what happened in future days, he would never forget that fact.

Jarlaxle’s cock seemed as clever and dextrous as his hands. Each writhing thrust drove Entreri against his bonds, drove his body into the mattress, drove him closer and closer to the edge. Through the ragged noise of his own cries he heard Jarlaxle say, “ _Come for me,_ ” and on that command he did.

As if Entreri’s climax was what he’d been waiting for, Jarlaxle lost his own rhythm, hips slamming in a handful of final, unrestrained thrusts. Obscenities in the drow tongue spilled from his mouth, and his fingers dug in hard enough to bruise.

Entreri came back to his senses just in time to feel the dark elf withdrawing from him, sinking back upon the bed. And then, before he could remain caught long enough to feel ridiculous, he felt cold steel sliding between his skin and the ropes. His skin remained unharmed, but the ropes parted easily.

No sooner was he free than Entreri rolled off the bed, staggering as he regained his feet. Sure enough, Jarlaxle had a knife in his hand. “You pretended you were unarmed,” the assassin spat.

“I was,” Jarlaxle said. “This was for after. I do hate the effort of unpicking all those knots, especially after you’ve pulled them so tight.”

Bits of the elaborate net still decorated Entreri’s body, left behind after the main strands holding him in place had been severed. He pulled them off with impatient hands--the ones he could. True to Jarlaxle’s words, a few of them remained stubbornly in place. He stalked over to his pile of discarded belongings and retrieved his jeweled dagger. Heedless of the risk to himself, he sawed viciously at the final scraps until they were gone.

Jarlaxle stayed where he was as Entreri dressed and armed himself once more. The assassin could not help casting one glance back in his direction, at the firelit perfection of Jarlaxle’s body. Then he turned and stalked out of the room.

But not before Jarlaxle could release one parting shot.

“If you ever feel like trusting me again,” the dark elf said, “you know where to find me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was rereading Servant of the Shard and basically writing this fic in my head as I went (because dear GOD are Entreri’s trust issues tailor made for kink), and then I got to the last two paragraphs and it’s all “Jarlaxle trusted Entreri like a brother ... and knew better than to trust his siblings.” So I decided to ignore that bit and just run with the “yep, they trust each other” part of the equation. And I guess there’s a whole crapton of stuff that happens between them later in the series, but I haven’t read any further than you have, so I took one look at the Forgotten Realms wiki summary for the later stuff and decided to stick with what I knew.


End file.
